Tag: Roman Medicine

It’s known that the Roman medicine is originated from the agriculture and the farmers were using the mixtures of plants and remedies. The two most important witnesses of this period are the Roman statesman, the orator and the first master of prose in Latin Marcus Porcius Cato (BC 234-149). The unique text remaining from Cato is the booklet about the agriculture.

Besides his experiences of agriculture in his work, Cato witnesses also the relationship between agriculture and medicine. While the Roman people attribute extraordinary forces to the wool, Cato advises to eat cabbage in abundance to be protected against illnesses and even he proposes to drink the urine of person who ate cabbage.

The chapter “De Medicina” (About Medicine) considered among the greatest medical classics of the most important medical author of the Roman period Aulos Cornelius Celsius, has been found by the Pope Nicolaus (1397 – 1455) in the Middle Age and has been one of the first medical books published after the invention of the printing machine (14 78). Celsius having the titles of “Cicero of the Doctors” and “Hippocrates of the Roman people” gives important information about the hygiene in his work and defines the plastic surgery operations.

Chinese medicine

The Chinese medicine related with Taoism has been focused on the prevention of diseases. As the legendary Huang It who is the father of the Chinese medicine observed, “A talented doctor helps the patient before the symptoms of the disease. The classical Chinese medicine is principally based on the works attributed to the three legendary emperors. According to the legend, the first one of these emperors is Fu Hsi who was born as a sacred creature in the shape of a snake at the beginning of B.C. 3000. In some illustrations, Fu Hsi is described as a head emerging behind a mountain and ornamented with a wreath of leaves.

Master of the doctors Ibn-i Sina

Ebu’l-Ali el Huseyin b. Abdullah Ibn-i Sina born in Hormisen in A.D. 980 near Bukhara and known as “the master and the monarch of the doctors” has reigned over the Eastern and the Western medicine for 600 years. The maturation, the progress and the emergence of this little giant who started to the primary school when he was 5-6 years old are unbelievable. After having learnt logic, mathematics and astronomy, he starts to deal with the medicine. Especially, he studies the causes of the emergence and the spreading of the diseases and the methods of treatment.

Ibn-i Sina who finishes his religious education at the age of 10, finds the remedy for the illness of “angina” which couldn’t be cured until that time. He is awarded by being nominated to the direction of the palace library named “Sivan al-hikma” belonging to Samanogullari. Ibn-i Sina involved in the books of the library and who is 20 years old when Nuh bin Mansur dies, goes to Harzem. The real inventor of the cybernetic and the automation El-Biruni accepts he and they work together; but this fact gives rise to the jealousy and some investigations are made about him: after these events, he lives Harzem and travels to the other places. He decides to stay in Hanedan, which is his last stop, and he spends his life here; he dies in 1037. His greatest work is shortly “The Law”. This manuscript translated to all Western languages is a piece of art with the calligraphy, the adorning and the anatomic miniatures.

The Ottoman medicine

One of the most important doctors of the Ottoman period is the doctor and poet Nidai who had lived in the second half of the 16. Century; he’s one of the five children of a family who had migrated from Jerusalem to Ankara. Nidai becomes one of the private doctors of Sehzade (son of a Sultan) Selim during the years of 1558-1562 and writes the illustrated medical manuscript in Turkish called “ed-Dihru Manzum” while practicing his profession in the asylums.

After the ascendance of Sehzade Selim to the throne, he becomes one of the doctors of the palace and he dies on a date which could not have been determined up to now. Nidai has seven works, most of them related to the medicine.